Managing photos across MacBook Pro, iPhone and iCloud

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Level 1

4 points

Managing photos across MacBook Pro, iPhone and iCloud

I want to keep all my personal digital images and videos in one place - my apple photos library.

I've just bought 2Tb of iCloud space.

I have a lot (and I mean a lot of photos and videos from over the years on my iPhone - it currently has 64Gb take up with this - over six years of memories, which I have migrated when periodically updating my phone), I also have more photos and videos from digital cameras on my MacBook from before my iPhone.

I want to add my old photos to my Photo album and reduce the space on my iPhone too.

My iPhone was synced with my MacBook but not all the videos and photos were being transferred.

I want to make sure I don't lose any of the videos with family and friends, some of whom are no longer with us.

In what order should I merge and upload my photos to the cloud to ensure everything goes across and I don’t love old family memories?

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 14

Posted on May 10, 2021 4:45 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Russ New Boy

Level 4

1,162 points

May 10, 2021 4:56 AM in response to StevenBG

First thing to do is to make sure you have full backups of the photos on all of your devices.

I would then sync one device at a time and wait until the sync is complete before activating iCloud Photos on the next device. Be warned, syncing of the large libraries could take a number of days to complete.

In terms of the order of devices, given you have storage issues on your phone it may be worth starting with that first. Once all of the photos are uploaded (you can also check on www.icloud.com to make sure the number of photos matches the number you see on your phone), you change the settings on your phone to Optimise Storage. That way, when you sync the photos from your Mac the phone will be able download the thumbnails for these photos without causing any storage issues.

For the photos that were not being transferred, create a smart album in Photos with the rule 'photo cannot be uploaded to iCloud'. For the photos shown, export them to your desktop and use a suitable program to convert them to a format that Photos accepts (over the years Apple has changed the file formats that Photos supports). For videos, I would use Handbrake. And then reimport the photos/videos into Photos.

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Answer 2

May 10, 2021 5:01 AM in response to Russ New Boy

One additional and absolute vital point. Within Photos on the Mac make sure you have 'Download Originals' ticked in the preferences section. This will make sure that the library on your Mac contains full res files of ALL of your photos. This is the library that you should back up to multiple places on a regular basis. This is a very good article written by Leonie that is worth reading.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002581

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